Asher never mentioned he had a girl staying with him or maybe he had a kid sister. The girl had her face straight on the road as she drove away.
Farris took a step beside her but she seize his hand with hers.
When he angrily turned to her, she shook her head disapprovingly. " No Farris, we cannot take rash steps" she reminded him.
She heard the low groan he gave before blinking knowingly at her and retreating his step.
" Get Vidal to come out. He needs to identify her" Farris ordered her, his eyes still following the girl who was almost out of their sight.
She ran inside the house in obedience. " August?! August?!" She was calling out as she arrived in the sitting room.
" Rune can you learn to be less of a savage?!" Luna hollered from inside the room she shared with Amadio.
Yeah, but when she started to howl whenever she and Amadio were doing their business, nobody tells her to keep it low.
Rune was not the type to pick offense on such but the next time Luna complains about something that she does, she would make sure to mention that just to perk up her annoyance.
That was what they all do, annoy each other out.
" For immortal sake girl, can't a man enjoy his martini in peace?" August who had a cigarette in one hand and also a cocktail glass filled with a martini in another blurted as he approached Rune.
Wait, what was wrong with her?
Farris said to get Vidal but here she was screaming at August.
Arghh- the damn illness was really getting to her. She hopes they solve this case soon so she could tell the others about how bad she was getting.
She tapped her forehead lightly. " Sorry August, not you. Where's Vidal?" she inquired from him.
August rolled his eyes at the mention of Vidal's name. " Probably roaming the backyard again," he said and began to walk back in without waiting for Rune's reply.
The smoke from August's cigarette got into Rune's nostril and surprisingly, she couldn't bare the smoke. The cough that erupted from her throat made it dry and hurtful.
Damn- her time was truly running out.
She ran outside the house again. Farris gave her a frown, surprised that she had not returned with Vidal. She rolled her hands in direction of the back of the building and ran toward there, leaving Farris clueless.
August was surprisingly right. She found Vidal bent in front of the low plank fence demarcating the garden of the house from the house of the boy next door.
He was too engrossed in whatever he was looking at to even notice her. " Vidal?" she called as she also bent beside him.
There, she saw the object of his concentration. There was a hole as though someone had used their hands in digging a path they could wriggle their body into to get inside their building from the house next door.
With every description and also what she was seeing now, she could decode that they were not all pointing to the house next door.
" It is still fresh. Like it's been done a few days ago" Vidal said to her, his eyes still on the hole.
She placed her hand on the hole and entered it into the space it gave. Her hands were inside the compound of the house next door but it was painful.
The space was too tiny, and hard for a full-grown person to fit into. " It's small. Too small for a person" she whispered. There was no reason for whispering but she felt as though there was an ear opposite listening to their conversation.
" Yes, unless it's not a person but a chameleon who can sift through shapes and appearances" Vidal removed her hand from the hole and told her.
With her other hand, she had to remove the sticky mud from the ground which had been plastered upon her hand away.
" Follow me, you need to see something," She told him, already standing up herself.
Vidal also stood with an inquiring brow. " Did something new happen?"
" Kinda" she replied, walking to the front of the house.
" Come" Farris barely allowed Vidal to reach him at all before he starts motioning for him to come.
Has Farris's curiosity and desperation clouded his judgment that he forgot how furious he was with Vidal for he sets his arms over Vidal's shoulders and began to closely instruct him? " There is a girl who came out of the house next door..."
Vidal's impatience also barely allowed Farris to speak at all before he cuts in. " The house next door? Why is every clue pointing to the house next door?"
" Did something happen?" Farris's jaw tightened.
" There is a small hole in the garden that leads to the house next door. Looks like someone dug it" Rune explained, her hands copping her body.
The cold was really getting to her.
Both of Farris's eyes were dimmed. " You don't say...?" he pressed his lips together then decided to continue explaining to Vidal. " So, this girl is small. Just like your description. She went on a bike and it seems she is going in grocery shopping. We will wait here until she comes back then you see for yourself"
Vital was quiet, patently lost in thinking.
The trio stood hands akimbo waiting patiently for the small frame girl who came out from the house next door to arrive.
After about thirty- five minutes of waiting, her bike jingled and so did her small body as she pedaled to the front porch of the house next door oblivious to the eyes on her. She set the bike aside to where she previously unchained it from and with a key she picked from the front pocket of her dress, she opened the house's front door.
She even has her own key! A key to Asher's house, Rune had to gulp. She would be surprisingly pained if Asher wasn't who he said he was.
" Is that her?" Farris's question to Vidal echoed in her ears.
Vidal's response came a little slow. A factor that upsets their curiosity. " No. She looks older than this and definitely bigger than this. But, let us not forget she can take any form she finds comfortable and investigate this girl still. Someone must have dug the hole in the garden. We need to know who" he finally said.
" It would have been better if she had not camouflaged a new look. I guess this brings us right to where we started. I should start preparing to go see Fender" Farris, who was disappointed to hear the chameleon had probably taken another form sighed and began to detach himself from the conversation.
Rune had been thinking. Her brain, working and trying to connect the dots and all of the clues.
" I have an idea" she declared and the two men turned to her immediately.
" Shoot," Farris said impatiently.
" Well, the boy next door is upset at us. I think he wanted to be friends with me before but the occurring incidents made that impossible. I can go to his house in a friendly bid and try to investigate the girl from closer" she shrugged, not sure if her idea sounded nice.
Farris did not even give a second thought to it. " Alright, you do that. I will go see how Fender's condition has become. I hope there will be positive changes because I don't see us solving this case anytime soon." he said hurriedly and went into the house.
" And I will continue to look around for any suspicious changes," Vidal added and walked back in the direction of the garden.
Rune was left alone now. She exhaled, rubbing her palms together. She would enjoy playing detective.
It had been a while since she went on actual missions and this little mission would serve as compensation to her.
At least, she would have a distraction to take her mind away from her illness for a while.
Somehow, deep inside, she was happy she would get to see Asher's face again. Images of his good-looking face wouldn't stop ceasing from her distorted mind not the image of her original form which he drew.
Her hands opened the gate of their house and she strode to the house next door.
Hesitantly, she pressed the doorbell. If Old Mrs. John was watching now, she has no cause to call the cops for she has done it the right way now.
She used the door, the human style.